This is going to sound odd coming form someone who hates nuts in their chocolate, but I love Payday. All jokes aside, I am referring to the candy bar. For some reason, taking the nuts out of the chocolate works for me, and that’s what a normal Payday is. So imagine my surprise when I saw this Payday Chocolatey Avalanche bar, I was curious to see how I liked chocolate in my nuts, for once.

Notice the wording “chocolatey” here, we’re obviously not looking (and soon to be eating) the real thing here. Oh, no. We got mockolate here peeps, which is always disappointing. Regardless, this is a Payday, and Payday is more about peanuts than anything else, so I will try and not let it sway my opinion too much. In hand, the bar looks like a normal Payday, just enrobed in the “chocolately” coating. I’m curious as to where the “avalanche” is though. Hrrmm.

My first bite was hard, literally. My teeth had to crack down on this sucker. It was really that hard! I have no choice to assume it’s not fresh, and judging from the code on the back (32Mr3E7f) so that would be…3rd week of 2002? Yikes, I hope not. Anyways, the center of the Payday is what’s rock hard and is giving me the tough time. The rest of the bar is great, and I’m relieved that the peants are still the star here: fresh with a good hit of salt. The chocolatey coating isn’t adding much, it does have an extra little sweetness to it overall, but flavor wise, I get nothing.

Unless you’re like me and are insistent trying every candy on the planet, I’d skip this and keep getting the regular Paydays. You always win with those!

Cadbury Picnic is a bar hailing from the Land Down Under. I’ve heard about it, but it wasn’t until an Australian friend sent me a candy care package that I finally encountered one. The specific one I got is actually a limited edition Picnic bar of the “Honey Almond Nougat” variety. “New!” and “A unique combination of almonds & crunchy pieces of honey almond nougat caramel & wafer covered in delicious Cadbury milk chocolate” are the descriptions on the wrapper. I’d by lying if I said it didn’t sound appealing and terribly tasty.

The regular Cadbury picnic bars have a wafer center, creamy caramel, and rice crisps all covered in chocolate. So this new variety adds more textural and flavor elements by replacing the rice crisps with the almonds and nougat. I still think that this will give me a pretty good indication of what the original bar is. It’s kinda funny how the Picnic sounds like the offspring of a Kitkat, a Nestle’s Crunch and a Milky Way.

I’m relieved to say that according to the ingredients list, this Picnic bar is using real chocolate! Yay! It’s gotten to the point where that’s always the first things I look for in candy bars. Yes, I’m a stickler for quality.

The bar itself looks like a very large, lumpy 100 Grand or a smaller, chocolate covered PayDay. Take your pick. It smells very strongly of sweet honey and almonds. It’s hard for my to explain but something in it also smells really “carb-y” and it’s hard to lay my finger on it. I don’t know what else it could be other than the nougat.

My first bite was extremely crispy. The center is the wafer and very similar in structure to a Kitkat. Wrapped around the wafer is the caramel, so already we have a crispy/chewy texture working here. The nougat and almonds add a slight crunch and it’s very addicting to chew and munch.

As for the flavor? It took me a moment to concentrate on it to be honest, I was already too busy trying to dislodge the pieces of nougat and caramel on my teeth. It’s got a lot going on: I get nice milky caramel notes, some light blandness from the wafers, then there’s a big salty hit from the almonds and finally a honey sweetness of the nougat. I don’t hardly taste any of the chocolate, as it cowers behind the big three of the caramel, nougat and almonds. I do like how the honey stands out, it proves a nice sweetness, especially blended with the caramel, and the saltiness provides a wonderful contrast. I just wish I wasn’t going to be picking bits of this out of my teeth for the next couple of hours. Ah, sacrifices, right?

As a fan of licorice, but not a fan of Twizzlers, there can be a drought of red licorice options when the craving hits me. That’s why I was so excited to learn of Red Vines, a traditional licorice confection that’s mainly found on the West coast. Which is probably why it took me so long to learn of it.

It took some looking, but I finally found some Red Vines to try. I located the Sugar Free Strawberry vines in Target. Usually I am weary of sugar free stuff because some of the side effects they can deliver and of course the odd aftertaste associated with them. They’re a wonderful thing if you can’t have the real stuff, but since I can, I don’t see much point in eating them. Regardless, I was so eager to get my first taste of Red Vines, I decided to get them. Sugar free or not.

That being said, I was pleased with the flavor of these. It is a standard “red flavor” licorice flavor but with more strawberryness to it. It’s a tad sweeter and the berry flavor shows in the aftertaste. It has a nice texture to it; not too sticky so it’s lodging itself in my molars but still giving a good chew. If you let these sit out for a few days they do get harder and I find the flavor fades some. The texture also becomes firmer and a little more rubbery. Still tasty, it really just depends on your licorice mood. The twists themselves are a gorgeous red color and are just delightful to look at.

Fun fact, Red Vines are the number one non chocolate confection in the West, according to their website. Pretty cool! I am hoping they get wider distribution out East here so I can try the rest of their line.

My sister discovered this bar during her freshman year of college and kept begging me to try one for the longest time. I finally did and though this was a few years ago, I still remember being impressed by the texture and flavor of the honeycomb center. I think it was my first experience with the stuff.

I was really interested to see how this compared to the Cadbury Crunchie I had earlier. The bar was already cracked when I opened it, so I immediately took a look at the cross section. There’s no burnt sugar stripe in the center like in the Crunchie, which is a defining feature in my opinion. The texture is lighter and crispier and doesn’t have the foamy melt in the mouth.

As for the flavor, it’s sweet and has a really good burnt sugar caramel flavor that’s reminiscent of how a perfectly toasted marshmallow tastes on a graham cracker. There’s also a subtle smokiness to it (perhaps why I’m thinking marshmallow) that’s very addicting. The coating is unfortunately mockolate, and therefore it doesn’t add any chocolate flavor but instead more sweetness. The mockolate also provides a cool, smooth texture contrast to the crunchy center.

Half way through the bar I started to get the sugar throat burn, which is unusual for me. The sweetness started to take precedence on my taste buds. Still, that smokiness followed through in the aftertaste and kept me interested enough that I finished the bar.

If I had to choose which honeycomb bar to eat next time, I’d rather have choose a Crunchie.

When I heard back in May that Starburst was coming out with a line of liquid filled gummies, I was pretty darn excited. I love, love, love Starbursts and always have. So the idea of the same flavors in a different textural format really piqued my candy interest. I finally acquired them in a care package from Cybele and was so giddy to finally try them.

Immediately Gushers come to mind, and all the childhood drama with it. As any kid knows, Gushers are the Porche of fruit snacks at school. My mom would never buy them so I was eternally doomed to un-coolness amongst my peers. Maybe my mom was onto something never buying them becasue they are candy, and Starbust seems to have picked up on that.

They come in four flavors: strawberry, cherry, orange and lemon. As I kid I would have loved these even more since there was no grape or “green” flavor. I always loved yellow and happily took the rejects that my friends had. The strawberry one was hard to spot at first, since it’s not pink, but a red-orange as opposed to red or orange. They’re nickel sized and quite plump, about 1/4 inch tall with the curly starburst “S” on it.

The texture is on the firmer side with a good chew, like Swedish Fish. The center is indeed liquid and had a syrupy feel to it. I wouldn’t say it was a “burst” though, but it was a nice contrast to the firm gummi casing.

Cherry: Tastes just like the cherry Starburst: very furity, a little floral with tart notes to it.

Orange: This is loyal to the original flavor. A strong juiciness with tart, authentic citrus qualities.

Strawberry: This one also tasted just like the Starburst chew to me. It was a little on the tart side but it did have a good “strawberryness” to it.

Lemon: Oh, so good! Has those great fresh zesty notes of the original starburst candies. A little sweet, mostly sour and all lemon. My favorite of the bunch.

I was slightly disappointed with these, only because the flavors weren’t 100% loyal to the chews and the texture wasn’t as “gushy” as I’d hoped. Still, these would do if I needed a break from the Starburst chew routine. I haven’t tired of them yet though.